


The Seed of Memory

by cascadewaters



Category: Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cascadewaters/pseuds/cascadewaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if home is not where you always assumed it to be?  Not all those who wander are lost... and not all that is lost is gone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seed of Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KayleeArafinwiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayleeArafinwiel/gifts).



_She remembered._

_Floating in the expanse between galaxies, with no task more urgent than to be patient whilst her silly bipedal made his repairs and took a bit of a rest from everyone, she slept. And sleeping, she dreamt._

_And remembered._

_It had been so far ago, so long away, before she had even properly taken root; she’d been just a seed, really, carried by her mother. She couldn’t have said what had brought it into her consciousness now—perhaps a sound, like the birth of a breeze rustling leaves too long left to sleep, or perhaps a scent, like the breath of wood and loam or the slightly spicy cologne of fir. Or perhaps it had been nothing, simply her imagination. Whatever the trigger, she welcomed the dream, rode its currents and explored its shadows._

_She first found herself in the sky, the pristine sky of a young world without star or satellite, and when she looked down, she saw hills and valleys and canyons and mountains and water and wood—oh, so much wood. She drifted down to smell of the boughs and the sweet zephyrs that danced amongst the crowns of trees, trees that touched more sky than ground. A part of her longed to sink her soul into the rich new earth that, even from above, called to her on a whisper, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave the freedom of the air to be stationary again. For a while, she was content just to float languidly, more comfortable in this place that she’d never known than in most other parts of the universe. Well, universes. Well, multiverses._

_She was just starting to idly wonder how she could see with no sunlight, and then the understanding, the memory, came to her—that her eyes, such as they were, had not been fashioned to need a governing star. Her limbs, for here she had so many limbs, had not been fashioned to need radiation from a ball of gas in order to grow and to cover themselves with leaves, an uncounted number of individual works of art. Her roots had not been fashioned to require a sun’s warmth to feed the rest of her being, nor had she need of solar energy for photosynthesis. She had been grown, yes, but she had been Made, first. She had been Made, here._

_She had barely digested that revelation, the wonder and joy of it, when she floated up out of the treeline again and saw something with her clean, silvery green vision._

_The forest Moved._

_No, she hadn’t imagined it. A whole section of the forest was moving, ploddingstridingwalkingMOVING, toward one point from different directions, and at a steady pace. The trees passed under her, and she zipped down to follow them, feeling like a sapling rather than a fairly ancient traveler. She shadowed them all the way to their meeting point, for that’s what it turned out to be—a meeting. These trees Talked, with proper voices, and though everything they said took a long time, their voices were like music to her, and she wanted nothing more for a moment than to let them wash over her for the rest of time._

_There were many kinds of trees at the meeting, and many different timbres of voice, but when she realized that they were all masculine, she decided to tune in to the conversation. After some time and patience, she learned that the owners of those lovely deep voices were worried—it seemed that someone was missing. Or lots of someones. She could hear their sadness, their bewilderment and loneliness, and she started to reach out, to offer some meager comfort… but they couldn’t hear her. They didn’t see her. She wasn’t there, not really. She’d spent her whole life hiding in plain sight, her own little slice of reality, and now that she wanted to be in their reality, she couldn’t be._

_But Someone saw her. She found herself in low orbit ‘round this world that should be dark but wasn’t at all, and this time, she wasn’t alone._

_He whispered to her, called her His child, and offered to answer one question. He waited patiently as she thought it over, and minutes or centuries later, she slowly and carefully asked, “Why must they be left to grieve?”_

_Her question must have pleased Him, for she felt a soft warmth surrounding her as he began to speak in her soul, words-that-were-not-words painting a fluid picture of a number of majestic trees growing restless and asking for something different, only to find themselves taken away to another world that soon filled with complacent bipedals; she gasped as she recognized the world she’d known for most of her Growth, and how her mother and sisters and aunts had all but asked for it, asked to be planted elsewhere, and how elsewhere had turned out to be a world where they were used and discarded like machines. She also saw that, back here, the husbands and brothers and fathers would wait and hope and search for them, through the dawning of a new star and a new moon and several kinds of people, and how that search would bring their paths to intersect with bipedals who would inspire them to Move once more to help save this world. The story had many subtle shades, but she could see that, even on distant planets, the Tender knew what His creations were up to; it made her sad to realize that she, just a seed from this world, was the only one left. That had never especially bothered her until now. Now she wept, for the wives who had run off and the husbands who were left behind to wonder; she even wept a little for herself._

_And then the Tender dried her ears for her, and reminded her that she would never be invisible to Him, no matter what._

_And then she woke._

_And, waking, remembered._

 

And she began to search.


End file.
